


The Eve of Rebirth

by Cuda (Scylla)



Category: Supernatural, Superwood - Fandom, Torchwood
Genre: Far Future, Genderbending, Immortals in Space, M/M, One Night Stands, Outer Space, Post-Series, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-04
Updated: 2015-12-04
Packaged: 2018-05-04 20:54:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5348210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scylla/pseuds/Cuda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel's trying to save humanity. Captain Jack Harkness is <i>also</i> trying to save humanity. Somehow during last night's roll in the metaphorical hay, they failed to explain this to each other, and now things have gone metaphorically south. Where Captain John Hart is involved, chaos is bound to follow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Eve of Rebirth

Pilgrims crushed up to the portals of the _Bright Future's_ viewing deck as Kepler-22b loomed. Their bodies were weak from centuries in stasis, even with months of careful reconditioning, and they were easy to shove aside. A gorgeous, shockingly healthy man in a long blue coat forced his way through the crowd. "Coming through!"

He carried a snub-nosed stunner, lifted from a security droid. Even this many years beyond Earth, the pilgrims' sleepy brains still recognized a weapon when they saw it. They crowded away from him and his quarry, bleating like frightened sheep.

Jack ran for his life. For his future life - for his existence and the existence of untold trillions. He careened along the curve of the viewing deck, panting, pilgrims bouncing away from him like atoms in a reactor. He was nearly in reach of his target, those tan coattails flapping just ahead. Jack cranked up the stunner to its highest setting, aiming with both hands on the grip. "Cas, stop! Don't make me do this!"

Jack's finger curled around the stunner's trigger - and Castiel vanished. He left the echo of his passing behind: a wet slap like laundry on an ancient Earth clothesline. Or massive bird's wings.

Jack doubled over, wheezing. Adrenaline subsided and his chest stung, legs felt too heavy to lift.

"See?" Captain John Hart stepped up beside him, swatting him on the back, "This is why I have a policy about handsome men in places they don't belong. Find out why they're there _before_ you take them to bed."

Jack rolled his eyes with a growl. "It's a stupid policy."

"Kept me alive," John said with a shrug, "I know that's not your problem anymore."

"It will be, if we don't stop him. Before his overactive conscience wipes out our species."

"He won't. He can't, honestly," John consulted his wrist strap. "In ten minutes, the _Bright Future's_ bridge will turn into the bloodiest cage match this side of Ganymede. He walks into that mess, he'll be dead before his pert little ass hits the captain's chair."

Reminded of the storm to come, Jack pulled himself upright with an effort. Still breathing hard, he started down the corridor again, then stopped. Spun back to John, who was watching him with amusement. "What about the engine room?"

John tilted his head. "Oh, you know these time traveling vigilantes," he drawled, "Gryffindors, the lot of 'em."

Jack squinted.

"What?" John snapped, turning to head back the way they'd come, "I read. I read a lot, thank you very much, which you'd know if you spent more than five minutes with me since I agreed to come along on this little jaunt of yours."

"I didn't invite you," Jack snapped, "I was taking back my ship. Which you took from me in the first place. The fact that you happened to be trussed up in the trunk like a Christmas goose was _karma_."

John continued on as if he hadn't heard. "Not that you ever cared what I like anyway. Bloody _Saturn_ terraformed with its own _Hogwarts_ by the Forty-Second Century and you were too busy—"

Jack cut him off. "They messed up the Chamber of Secrets. Now come on." He trotted past John, smirking at the muttered insult he caught on the way by.

"I heard that. I can put you back in the trunk," he threatened.

John fell in after him, stretching his stride to keep up. "I realize now that the sex was the only thing ever saving this marriage," he panted, "You were a rotten partner back at the Agency, you know that? You still _are_."

Jack just laughed.

 

* * *

 

"Captain? Yo, Cap!"

A whistle followed.

Castiel turned.

A pair of young women stood in the corridor behind him, slippered and clad in regulation pajamas from cryo. His eyes went to their hands, linked tightly enough for the knuckles to whiten. They'd dreamed entire lifetimes, waiting to wake, and lost entire lifetimes in the process. They were sisters, just a year apart. Even before the mission, they'd been one another's world.

His, too, though they didn't know it. Relief and pain snapped through him as he looked at them; into them. He knew their names, Bree and May, and couldn't tell them he knew.

"You're not the captain," observed the younger sister, May. Suspicion bloomed in her slight frame, made even smaller somehow by the outsize clothing she wore. Her soul remembered the best of him, but she'd had a hard life. Wariness would likely always be her first reflex.

"No," Castiel agreed, keeping his voice low, "I'm sorry, the captain is on the bridge, with the rest of the landing crew."

"Then who're you?" Bree demanded, hiking up her chin a touch. The freckles on her nose made familiar constellations, and her bright green eyes made Castiel's heart clench. She'd spent every life alone, or nearly so, until now. Until he'd played his hand and outsmarted the forces toying with Bree's fate out of petty revenge.

The truth waited on Castiel's tongue, pushing for freedom. He wanted to tell them, to _sing_ it. He wanted to tell them who they were, how important they were, and how he would never let them be separated - or tossed to the void - again.

He swallowed.

"Chief Navigator," Castiel replied, schooling his voice once again.

"Oh. Then what's with the weird costume? Is that a bathrobe?" Bree gestured at his coat. May nudged Bree's hip with her knuckles and gave her a disapproving glare.

"Shouldn't you be on the bridge too?" May asked, "Don't they need you?"

"I'm on my way there. To be sure we stay the course." Castiel smiled, and May offered him a tentative smile in return.

"Well, don't screw it up!" Bree said. She flashed him a cocky grin of her own.

"I won't," Castiel said, shoving his fists in his pockets, trying very hard to breathe the tightness from his chest.

Muffled shouts echoed down the corridor, followed by a half dozen sharp pings, like hailstones on a tin roof. The girls turned and Castiel lunged for their shoulders before they could get away from him.

"That's gunshots!" Bree exclaimed. As if in answer, they heard the oncoming wail of a security droid.

Rage boiled up in Castiel, mostly at himself. He shouldn't have been so selfish and trusting - should have vaporized the stranger when he realized that Jack wasn't _really_ a Time Agent. Or not one anymore, which was worse. If there was violence, and it was Jack's doing, and it jeopardized his girls, he would make Jack _pay_ for every happy life Bree and May had been denied.

And Castiel would make himself do it with his own hands.

"Go back to your cabin," Castiel growled, unable to keep the anger out of his tone, "tell everyone that they need to stay inside."

Bree clenched Castiel's hand with surprising strength. "What else can we do?" She asked, "We want to help! We can fight!"

Bree's eyes met Castiel's. The snap of recognition between them was suddenly so strong that it was almost pain. He could feel her fear.

"Take care of each other," Castiel said firmly, "and take care of your cabin. Do whatever you have to."

The security droid reached them, on its way towards the noises down the corridor. Castiel shoved a fist through its central processing system as it made to pass them, snagging its stunner as it fell.

He handed it to Bree and ran, pushing her awed expression out of his mind.

 

* * *

 

"Apparently, someone _wasn't_ a Gryffindor, after all," John said sadly, looking over the sizzling engineering console.

Jack felt like kicking something. Hard and repeatedly.

John inspected the error on the one unbroken screen. "Just knocked out the pulse engines. She can land on schedule, but her ass won't turn. Bit too surgical for the hackjobs upstairs."

"All of the other power systems feed into the life support," Jack snarled.

"Bloody noble of—oh. It's your boyfriend's doing, innit?"

"One night stand," Jack retorted, "and yes. He thinks we're trying to steal the ship."

A few more error messages popped up as John tapped the diagnostic tool. "Say the word and I'll fry the pigeon extra crispy for you. You can even watch if you want, I like an audience. Ugh," he smacked the console in irritation as the diagnostic gave him more bad news, and went back to work, "I don't know when your taste started running to the heroic, but it's gotten _me_ nothing but trouble."

Jack came up behind him, scanning the readouts. "Don't worry," he grumped, "if we survive this, I'm swearing off heroes completely."

"The universe heaves a collective sigh of relief," John muttered, then clapped his hands with a triumphant whoop as the generator behind him began to spin. "One down!" He spun around and snagged Jack's collar to sneak a celebratory kiss.

Jack fended him off. "Nice try," he said with a smirk, backing out of John's grasp, "Get the other _seven_ running and I'll think about it."

"I knew you loved me! Hey—where are you swanning off?"

But Jack was already at full tilt, boots echoing on the metal grate catwalk as he ran.

"How do you know I'm gonna do it?" John yelled, "Maybe I'll take the ship myself, pick a new planet, make myself their god!"

No answer but faint, receding bootheels on steel.

John turned back to the console, shaking his head. " _Typical._ "

 

* * *

 

Castiel arrived at the bridge of the _Bright Future_ a few minutes too late. Once a polished glass showpiece, empty and waiting for its crew, the sleek room was now a wasteland of chaos and gore. Talented, highly trained communications and navigational officers slumped at their stations, just hours after waking up for the first time in hundreds of years.

And they weren't alone. With them were the charred, motley corpses of several species of alien - some Castiel knew. The bottom half of a Dalek sat near the captain's chair, thin tendrils of smoke curling out. A pair of Cybermen oozed blue jelly all over the floor. On top of them was another layer of dead humans - and Castiel recognized a few of these.

Time Agents, as Castiel had originally believed Jack to be. Two teams. All four sprawled between the officers' platform and the navigation consoles.

He ducked back into the corridor, wracking his brain for an answer. If this was Jack's doing, he must have just left. What did he want with this ship, didn't he realize how important it was? But he did want it, evidenced by the journal of notes Castiel found in Jack's bunk, complete with fuel and navigation adjustments for the _Bright Future_ to bypass Kepler-22b. They hadn't—talked much—the night before. Castiel had the good sense to flush, and looked up at the ceiling in a silent prayer for forgiveness - as if Heaven was really above him, as if the universe really had an 'above.'

As if anyone in Heaven truly cared what he did anymore. The affairs of humans had long since stopped being any concern of Castiel's brothers.

Footsteps scuffed on the bridge, turning sticky and chapped as they trod over blood. Castiel slowly got one eye around the doorframe, searching for the source of the noise.

Jack, entering from the opposite side of the bridge.

Rage bunched up in Castiel's throat. He stayed put with an effort. Rashness was no use to an angel. No use to a soldier.

"Cas?" Jack called, moving further into the room. Castiel watched him flinch at the Dalek, giving it a wide berth, until the Time Agents on the floor distracted him.

Jack muttered a curse and knelt, feeling for an Agent's pulse while Castiel watched. "So this was it, huh?" Jack asked the young woman on the floor, "I always wondered." He rose again, seemed to give the others up for lost unseen, and moved to the navigation console.

Castiel considered his options quickly. The room was filled with reflective surfaces; he'd be seen in seconds. Invisibility and teleportation sapped precious energy he might need. Jack had proven difficult to kill already. He should wait, stalk Jack to gain the advantage. Besides - Castiel reminded himself with a smirk - sending the _Bright Future_ off-course was impossible now. Jack would find that out soon enough.

Jack peeled the cover from his wrist strap. "John?" he spoke near it, "Bridge is a wreck. Still heading for Kepler. How are we looking?"

A tinny, muted voice came from the small speaker plate on the strap's silver dash. _"All but one's diverted."_

"Well, hurry it up!"

_"Can't think how many times I've heard _that_ before. Fuck's sake, Jack."_

"I don't know where Cas is," Jack snapped the words, lips drawn back in a grimace, "he could be around the corner for all I know."

Castiel flattened himself against the door with a wince.

"Or he could be on his way to you. And our window is closing," Jack reminded the man on the other side. They were talking about the pulse engines. They had to be. Castiel's fists doubled over. How much time did he have before they were locked into a descent? If he attacked Jack, would that delay him long enough to make sure they couldn't turn the ship?

A pause.

"Well?" Jack snarled.

_"It's not going. The outgoing wires were fried - I can't divert it. You've gotta work with what you have."_

Jack touched a few buttons, shook his head, and pushed the dead navigation ensign away from the console. "None of them are working. What did you do?"

 _"They're not?"_ John said from Jack's wrist strap, as a second set of footsteps registered in the corridor. Castiel peered up and down the hallway, searching for the source.

"No! Dammit, we don't have time for this!" Jack growled.

Castiel felt a warm body press up suddenly to his back, and a cool blade slide in between his ribs.

"No," said the voice on Jack's wrist strap, now right at Castiel's ear, "we really don't. Cheers, love. Next life, don't put your hands on things that don't belong to you."

The blade twisted cruelly. Had Castiel been remotely human, he supposed that would have been the end of him.

After a second of surprise, Castiel elbowed his attacker in the face, hard enough to slam them into the corridor wall. John bounced off with a grunt, blinked at the knife sticking out of Castiel's back, and barked a wet laugh.

"Oh, _goodie,_ " John said, wiping blood from his mouth as Castiel pulled out the knife.

Castiel examined it, then flipped it away, drawing his angel blade instead.

Jack came running towards the sounds of the fight. Before Castiel could do more than advance on John, he felt hands on his shoulders and a rough shove to the right.

"This had better not be what it looks like," Jack said, glaring at John.

"Really, Jack. To quote a philosopher from your precious Earth," John leaned against the wall, rubbing his jaw, "If you don't know me by now, you will never, never, never, never know me." His gaze cut to Castiel, whom he looked up and down with disdain. "And why are you not dead? What, did Jack go and make himself another immortal as a sex toy?"

Though he'd been among the humans for centuries, the conversation still left Castiel asea. He waved it off, turning to Jack. "You don't belong to this ship," he growled, and shoved Jack into the wall, blade to his throat, "You can't have it. I won't allow it."

A punch connected with the side of Castiel's head, throwing it sideways. He registered the blow with a little, disoriented flinch, then looked slowly back at John, who'd tossed it. John, whoever he was, had become a nuisance. A distraction, therefore a threat. His blade flashed from Jack's throat, only to be stopped by a hand around his wrist.

"Cas, NO!" Jack shouted.

And here was the opportunity Castiel had been waiting for. He could break Jack's arm with a touch; punch a gory hole through his chest and leave him to drown in his own blood.

And then he remembered May's curly mop of brown hair. Of the freckles dusting Bree's nose. All thoughts of revenge vanished, chased away by horror. Horror at how close he'd come to following through. He had another chance to give them what they'd never been given - peace. Their first memories of him would not include murder. Especially not out of retribution.

"Cas, I don't want it! I'm trying to save it!" Jack said, reminding Castiel that he _still_ had Jack pinned.

"Oh, _do your homework,_ Jack," John said in a bored voice, sauntering past Castiel and Jack towards the console, "this moment is a fixed point. No matter what happens, this boat will always swerve. Have you _seen_ how many morons have tried to wipe out the human race today? Really." He stepped up to the glowing console, held up his wrist strap, and pressed a button. The whine of servo motors filled the bridge as every security camera trained on John. He pushed another button, and put on a horror-stricken face.

"Thank god I got here in time!" John said for the cameras, then spoke a few words into his wrist strap and the _Bright Future_ began to veer. Hard. The force generated by the turn threw Castiel into the wall, and Jack with him. Fighting the gees, Castiel tried to find his feet - only to go down again as a broken chair from the chaotic bridge rolled through the doorway and slammed into him.

The hull began to scream, noises of distress like whalesong, before the ship straightened again. After an eternity, the force lessened.

Castiel watched in horror. He'd failed. His charges - and the rest of humanity - would die slowly of starvation in space. Or go back into cryo to face an unknown fate. He thought of the girls, and scrambled away from Jack, clutching the blade of his sword hard enough to cut his palms.

"Cas—" Jack said, reaching out to him, "—stop."

But Castiel was already on his feet. He charged at John, silent with rage, and swiveled his blade in his palm for the kill. He'd incinerate the man for what he'd done, _slowly_ , resurrect him with the last of his strength and then do it all over again. Or kill both men with as much brutality as his efficiency would allow, and focus on finding his boys - his girls, now - a place to rest.

A bolt from Jack's stunner poured volts of electricity through Castiel's frame. Pain ripped through him as his muscles went rigid. It wasn't enough to kill him - not much could - but he hit the floor, skidding into John's legs in a limp pile.

John laughed. "Well _done_ , Jack!"

"What is this?" Jack demanded.

John crossed his arms, gazing thoughtfully at the ceiling. "You know, after you left, I had some time to think. And _I_ thought, I need a makeover. And you need a hero. And so here I am!" He spread his arms.

"You?" Jack scoffed, "don't kid yourself."

"Saved the day, didn't I?"

"Try 'toyed with the lives of millions.' Or how about, 'almost wiped out the human race.'"

John's eyes rolled up to the ceiling, with a groan that seemed to build from the soles of his boots. "Haven't you been listening? We were never in danger, not really. And in case you haven't noticed, we're no longer plummeting into a hail of arrows, are we?" he looked down at Castiel on the floor with a sour smile, "Which was waiting for us on that planet, sweetheart." He grabbed his chest and jerked as if shot.

"Fine," Jack's voice was laced with malice, "Thanks, if that's what it takes, _thank you,_ Captain John Hart, from the bottom of my heart. Now. Get. Off. This. Ship." The stunner turned on John.

John's grin disappeared. He waggled his finger. "I wouldn't do that. We wouldn't want to look like terrorists, now would we?" The bridge cameras turned again, their tiny motors like a swarm of angry bees.

Jack rolled his eyes. "Oh, _please._ This is one of your worst ideas yet."

"Is _not!_ "

"Remember the subliminal messages in the _Scissor Sisters_ album? This is worse than that."

The words set something off in John; waved the flame under the fuse of some personal dynamite in his soul. His expression darkened, all the affected swagger draining away, exposing the broken heart for a second or two.

When the fuse burned low enough, he exploded. "What's it take to get your attention, Jack? You know, these past few months, I thought you'd come round. I bought these fucking pants for _you,_ and what did I get? I don't think you even _glanced_ at my ass." John looked down, and Castiel caught a glimpse of the genuine tragedy in his expression.

Jack, on the other hand, was blank. "Move on, John."

John's eyes flashed. "Make me," he dared. Tapped his wrist strap, thumbed a button, and vanished.

The silence on the bridge - for a few minutes, anyway - was near total. Jack looked down at Castiel on the floor, sighed, and moved past him to the console again. He worked without speaking, and as it was currently the only thing he could do - Castiel watched.

Slowly, the effects of electrocution began to wear off. When his arms and legs were more or less functional, Castiel struggled to his feet. He joined Jack at the controls, now in a far quieter frame of mind. What was done was irreversible, even for an angel. Perhaps the entire Garrison might have been able to do it, but they were out of reach.

"Is that why you had plans to divert the ship?" Castiel asked, "You were trying to save us?"

Jack huffed. "Figured that out all by yourself, did you?"

"Why didn't you tell me the truth last night?" Castiel glowered.

"I didn't owe you that. Especially not after you went through my things." Jack looked up, and put the stunner on the navigational console between them. "I want answers. Like what the hell you are. I saw that disappearing act you did earlier."

"I'm an Angel of the Lord," Castiel sighed.

"I remember. Is that your division? I've never heard of it. Looked it up last night after you left; didn't find anything."

Castiel considered his options. On one end, the possibility that he'd see Jack again after this was extremely remote. On the other - if there was an off chance they did meet again, he'd rather it not be on false pretense. "It's a long story," he said, and left it at that.

Jack cocked his head. "Why are you here? Pretty sure you're not a time traveler bent on wiping out humanity," he gestured to the dead around them, "and you're not human. What's your stake in this?"

"Two boys," Castiel said simply, amending the statement afterward, "there are two people on this ship, whom I care about. Very much. I want to be sure they find a place where they belong."

They stood there, at the foot of the navigational console, watching one another. For a blink? For a flinch? For a sign of an untruth? Although Castiel knew this man's body pressed to his just hours ago, it seemed more hallucination now than reality. In a short score of time, Jack had become a stranger again. A stranger with a deep well of secrets, who promised to become a stranger again and again, no matter how long they spent in one another's company.

"I don't trust you," Jack said, "but I do believe you - for the record."

"That's mutual," Castiel replied. Snapped his fingers, and the bridge was empty and spotless. Because he could. Because Jack needed to know there was something to fear in him. At least as much fear as such a curiously indestructible human was capable of. "I have questions as well. For the record."

Jack started away from him. He surveyed the bridge, round-eyed, then stared at Castiel with a whole new flavor of fascination.

Castiel turned, headed for the hallway. He had a pair of wayward souls to check on. "To answer your question, Jack, I put them back in cryo. They'll wake up in a few hours. If my interests are going to survive, we need them." Abruptly lightheaded, Castiel watched in dismay as the deck sloshed away under his feet. He'd overreached himself, of course, too busy trying to be impressive again to manage his resources. He stumbled in a terribly undignified fashion, ruining what would have been an otherwise majestic exit.

Jack caught him.

With the gloomy precognition that this was going to become something of a habit, Castiel passed out.


End file.
